International #DayOfTheGirl#IDG2017

October 11 marks the 6th celebration of the International Day of the Girl (#IDG2017)

At USAID, we want every girl to go to school, live in a home and community free from violence, and receive the care she needs to grow healthy and strong.

Empowering girls is a critical step toward our goal of ending the need for foreign assistance. We know that no country can truly succeed if it excludes the voices and talents of half its population-- and we realize that girls are vulnerable to challenges that can stop them from reaching their full potential.

To accelerate progress for girls everywhere, USAID leverages a whole of girl approach.

Stories to Share

Facebook: If you are a teenage girl growing up in Zimbabwe you have a 1 in 3 chance of being married by age 18-- and the same odds of being a victim of physical violence. One in 6 of your friends already has a baby. Two-thirds of your neighbors live in poverty, and the rest are mostly just scraping by. By the time you reach your early 20s, you will be 3 times as likely as your male peers to be HIV-positive. So how are over 100,000 Zimbabwean girls breaking out of this cycle to take control of their futures? This is their story.

Facebook: “I taught my mother to read,” said 12-year-old Aisyah. Her mom, Ibu Anno, hadn’t been able to finish elementary school as a child, and neither had many women her age in Indonesia. To close this literacy gap for future generations, USAID has donated eight million books to 13,000 schools in Indonesia-- giving 3.7 million of Indonesia’s 35 million elementary and middle school students a chance to read, learn and grow. And now, Aisyah and her mom can read together.

Educating girls can improve the health of a nation’s economy: if 10 percent more girls attended school, a country’s GDP could increase by an average of three percent.

Each extra year of a mother’s education reduces the probability of infant mortality by 5 - 10%.

On average, increasing a girl’s secondary education by one year raises her future income by 10 to 20 percent.

Research shows that educating girls has a multiplier effect: better educated women tend to be healthier, participate more in the formal labor market, earn more income, marry at a later age, and provide better healthcare and education to their children.

The risk of maternal mortality is highest for adolescent girls under 15 years old, and complications in pregnancy and childbirth is a leading cause of death among adolescent girls in developing countries.